A few weeks ago, I argued that the debate about the true nature of religion is hampered both by a confusion between what we think it ought to be and what it actually is, and by a lack of knowledge about what religious people, rather than the elite commentariat, really think. To get a better sense of these facts on the ground, you've helped me conduct a survey, which I also ran one Sunday in November in and outside various Bristol churches. I've finally collated all the responses and I think the results make for interesting reading.

First of all though, it's vital that I acknowledge the extreme limitations of these surveys upfront. The online version was taken by a self-selecting sample of 767 churchgoers, the majority of whom read Comment is free at least occasionally and who are mostly aged 18-35. This is not a representative sample of typical practising Christians. The paper version was completed by 141 churchgoers in Bristol, again not randomly sampled. However, these apparent limitations in some ways make the results even more interesting, because you'd expect the sample group in both instances to be more educated and liberal than the average. We can then be fairly confident that the surveys would not overstate the extent to which people held conventional, some might say more simplistic, versions of Christian doctrine.

Nevertheless, it is essential to stress that I take these surveys to be no more than indicative. And as the survey was exclusively about Christianity, what we can extrapolate about the likely beliefs of people in other religions is especially limited. So I see these results as being no more than highly suggestive and would like to see more rigorous work done to test what the reality is. I want to thank the various Comment is free readers who have already pointed me to other research. I've still got to work my way through a lot of it but I have yet to see anything that achieves quite what I'd like to see.

So what is the headline finding? It is that whatever some might say about religion being more about practice than belief, more praxis than dogma, more about the moral insight of mythos than the factual claims of logos, the vast majority of churchgoing Christians appear to believe orthodox doctrine at pretty much face value. They believe that Jesus is divine, not simply an exceptional human being; that his resurrection was a real, bodily one; that he performed miracles no human being ever could; that he needed to die on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven; and that Jesus is the only way to eternal life. On many of these issues, a significant minority are uncertain but in all cases it is only a small minority who actively disagree, or even just tend to disagree. As for the main reason they go to church, it is not for reflection, spiritual guidance or to be part of a community, but overwhelmingly in order to worship God.

This is, I think, a firm riposte to those who dismiss atheists, especially the "new" variety, as being fixated on the literal beliefs associated with religion rather than ethos or practice. It suggests that they are not attacking straw men when they criticise religion for promoting superstitious and supernatural beliefs. Yes, I know you can define "supernatural" in such a way that turning water into wine isn't supernatural after all, but when atheists use this word, their argument is not based on an unjustified linguistic or metaphysical stipulation. They are simply pointing out that religions maintain that things happen which cannot be explained simply in terms of physical laws and human agency, and on this it appears most churchgoers agree.

There are some areas where the mainstream belief is not quite traditional. Most accept that although the Bible refers to God as "He", God is neither male nor female. Only a minority – albeit a very large one – believes in biblical infallibility, which is not the same as its factual accuracy, since most reject a reading of Genesis as history. Nonetheless, even in these areas one might be less pleased that these are no longer majority views than disturbed by how many still hold them.

One thing I really should stress is that I have always included the number of people who did not answer questions. Many people objected to the surveys on the basis that some questions were allegedly ill-formed and contained false assumptions, and so there was no way of giving a meaningful answer. Well, I made it clear at various points that people should not answer questions if they felt unable to do so and it turns out the vast majority felt they could provide meaningful answers. So to those who say they couldn't answer the questions as they stand, you're speaking for yourself, not the majority of Christian churchgoers.

It seems to me that these results, if truly indicative of what people actually believe, are highly significant for the present debate about religion. The challenge to the likes of Karen Armstrong – which I'd love to hear her response to – is to accept that when they claim religion isn't really about literal belief, they are advocating a view about how religion ought to be in its best form which just doesn't describe the reality on the ground. They are defending an ideal of religion, a possibility that is not the normal actuality. (Although I do have a potential response to this they could offer, which I'll come back to in a future post.) Therefore when responding to atheist criticisms, the accusation cannot be that they misrepresent religion. The best that can be said is that atheists focus too much on religion as it is most usually found and should pay more attention to the better forms. Whether that is a good enough reply is the subject for another argument.